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Brotherly Love – Legend 330SR Spot and the Avett Brothers

Posted on April 2, 2015

A lot of fans are blown away when they attend a concert by The Avett Brothers; and why not? The heartfelt hooks and harmonies of this up-and-coming Grammy-nominated band are at once comfortably plain spoken yet endlessly complex, effortlessly blending the group’s bluegrass roots with genres ranging from punk to calypso to ragtime.

Jeremy and Keith Harold of United Sound and Electronics were also deeply moved by this North Carolina band’s show recently, not just by the music (though they liked that well enough), but also by the intense output of the Legend 330SR Spot from CHAUVET Professional, which was used in the group’s lightshow.

“The Legend 330SRs blew us all away,” said Keith Harold, who is responsible for lighting at USE, which set up the rig for the band at the Nelsonville Music Festival. “The technical director of the festival had actually cross rented the Legends from another company because The Avett Brothers needed a CMY spot fixture.”

After working with the Legend 330SR Spot on stage, the Harold brothers made a big decision. “When we saw how fast and powerful the Legend 330SR Spots were, we knew that we had to have them for our own inventory,” said Jeremy. “So we sold many of the moving heads we had in our rental inventory and replaced them with these fixtures for the touring season.”

A moving spot fixture powered by a 330-watt OSRAM Sirius lamp, the Legend 330SR Spot produces 62,200 lux at 5 meters, but Keith Harold notes that there were features beyond output that made the light well suited for The Avett Brothers concert. “The match between the Legends and the intense emotions of the music was great,” he said. “I have to say the 330SRs with their rich colors and punchy output played the biggest role in setting the mood to the group’s music.”

A total of eight Legend 330SR Spots were used on trussing over the 40’ by 40’ Nelsonville Music Festival stage for performances by The Avett Brothers and their opening act The Head and the Heart. There were four Legend 330SR Spots on upstage truss and four on downstage truss, each configuration intermingled with an equal number of wash fixtures.

Also included in the rig were par 64 fixtures and 8-spot audience blinders. A full-sized grandMA console was used to control the lighting rig, which was called upon to represent a range of emotions visually during The Avett Brothers lively and engaging 22-song set.

Epitomizing the group’s categorization-defying musical style, the set began with a rollicking rendition of the Appalachian fiddle and banjo standard Chuck Old Hen and ended with a surprise encore cover of Harry Bellefonte’s calypso hit Jumping in the Line. In between were a collection of favorites from the group’s top ten Billboard albums Magpieand Dandelion and The Carpenter.

“The rich colors, along with the powerful and punchy beams, gave some really awesome looks for a great show,” said Jeremy Harold. “Everything went very smoothly with this setup. We’re grateful to everyone involved at Nelsonville for making this go so smoothly – and for introducing us to the Legend 330SR Spot!”